Matu
given name · Latin script
Meaning: The clouds
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Matu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Costa Rica it is the 80th most common surname.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 308as Mata(measured from records)
- BRBrazil1 in 415as Mota
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 637as Mata
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Matu itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #896 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 389 (measured from records)
- 1 in 308 (inferred from the name graph)
510,309 named Mota
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Costa Rica, as Mata
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Mata in BR Brazil, US United States, VE Venezuela and 5 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
The clouds.
Sources 1
- The African book of names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Matu counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #212 | 510,309as Mota | 1 in 415 | 510K | Mata | 157 |
| US United States | — | 48,120as Mata | 1 in 6.9K | 48K | Mata | 389 |
| VE Venezuela | #114 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 637 | — | Mata | 109 |
| PH Philippines | #386 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Mata | 75 |
| ES Spain | #184 | 20,612as Mata | 1 in 2.4K | 21K | Mata | 178 |
| CR Costa Rica | #80 | 16,568as Mata | 1 in 308 | 17K | Mata | 97 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #165 | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Mata | 46 |
| SV El Salvador | #187 | ≈5,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Mata | 51 |
510,309 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname), counting the spelling mota. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Matu is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Lithuanian, instrumental singular of mãtas (“measure”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, inflection of mats (“hair”):
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sga, third-person plural present indicative of masu
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Czech, genitive/dative/locative singular of mat
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In iba, clean with a stone, as the hands
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Thembsie Matub. 1966ZASouth African actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 24 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 139 | #128,411 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 108 | #151,532 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 41 | #120,411 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 29 | #65,725 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 29 | #64,358 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Matu mean, and where does it come from?
- The clouds. Recorded by The African book of names.
- Is Matu a male or female name?
- Matu is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Matu have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 510 thousand people named Mota, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Matu most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Matu itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Costa Rica's: the national register counts about 1 in 308 people named Mata.
- How common is the name Matu?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 510,309 people named Mota, about 1 in 415 residents.
- How common is Matu compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Matu is the 212th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Matu?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/matuThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Matu” — the 212th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.